Nike teases upcoming ‘Airphoria’ NFT sneaker hunt on Fortnite

Footwear and apparel giant Nike has hinted that it may soon drop a collection of sneaker nonfungible tokens in Epic Games’ widely popular online game Fortnite.

The move would mark a potentially huge opportunity for Web3 adoption by traditional gamers, given that Fortnite has had more than 242.9 million active players over the past 30 days, according to Active Player.

Great catch with the @dotSWOOSH reference. @FortniteGame integration would be the biggest thing that’s ever happened with NFTs

— Jalazo.eth (@nft4dummies) June 16, 2023

In a June 16 announcement across Nike’s social media channels, the firm stated that on June 20 the “ultimate Sneakerhunt begins.”

In a brief accompanying video, Fortnite’s logo and Nike’s Air Max logo are featured front and center amongst a backdrop of floating clouds in the sky.

The video then transitions to reveal the name of the sneaker hunt, “Airphoria” and concludes by showing Nike’s logo for its web3 platform .SWOOSH alongside the logo for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

On 6.20 the ultimate Sneakerhunt begins. ?? pic.twitter.com/QgMyA1uXRT

— Nike (@Nike) June 16, 2023

Details are sparse at this stage, however, members of the NFT community speculated that Nike may have built an NFT-related game using Fornite Creative 2.0, which essentially enables users to create their virtual island game maps using Fortnite assets.

“I remember that Fortnite recently launched Fortnite Creative 2.0, which has a strong self-built map mode similar to creating games on ROBLOX. I guess Nike may have used this mode to create a game. Two years ago, Nike also created a game on ROBLOX, but it was not combined with NFT[s] at that time,” noted @clone_news_cn.

While it is not 100% confirmed if NFTs will be a part of Airphoria, .SWOOSH’s involvement would suggest that it is on the cards, while Epic Games also holds a friendly stance towards NFT gaming.

Nike’s NFT unit has been ramping up its efforts to edge its way into the traditional gaming space of late.

On June 1, .SWOOSH announced that its NFTs will be integrated into games developed by EA Sports, the company behind the hugely successful FIFA soccer game franchise, among others. However it has not been confirmed which EA Sports games will eventually have Nike NFTs in them.